AcctTwo Blog

At a certain point every business has to upgrade its accounting software. Solutions like QuickBooks may be adequate to start, but not once businesses begin to grow and diversify. Committing to an upgrade is an important step for future success. The question is what kind of upgrade to pursue.

In the new book “Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future—and What to Do About It,” author Tien Tzuo argues that services are becoming more important than products. Most of us already rely on services like Netflix or Amazon Prime, and the idea of paying for access rather than ownership will soon become standard.

There is a reason SaaS has become the dominant approach to business applications: It makes more sense for both the user and the provider. Users get better tools at a lower cost while providers can count on a steady stream of revenue and closer client relations.

The only downside of running a dynamic SaaS company is that performance is hard to track and difficult to define. Success and failure are driven by multiple variables, and it’s easy to mistake positives for negatives and vice versa.

Rolling out a next-generation, enterprise-class software solution is a major undertaking. As a result, the day the software goes live often feels like crossing the finish line. In reality, it’s more like the halfway point of the race.

In our previous articles on How We Work, we talked about how social media is changing the way we interact and collaborate at work, and we explored the early history of workflow and its challenges. In this third installment, we'd now like to talk about how computers and networking have revolutionized workflow, taking us into the 21st Century, and touching on the advances and challenges of today.

Embrace Change or Suffer the Consequences

Accounting systems are not something you change or replace very often. However, as your software company grows in size or complexity, prepares to go public, or is already a public company, you will reach a point where manual processes are draining your productivity and you struggle to analyze the growing range of your financial and operating data. You’ll need a better way to handle accounting within your software company. You’ll need to modernize your system.

This may be something those of us in the cloud-based accounting software industry talk about a lot, but hearing it from a consultant who sells Quickbooks really drives it home:

We're Harping on this for a Reason

I know we keep harping on what true SaaS is and what “cloud-based” means, and that perhaps it sounds like we’re getting caught up in semantics, but there is a reason for our fixation - why we're shouting from the rooftops. There are huge advantages in cloud-based SaaS ERP solutions. Some advantages, like configurability and real-time reporting and dashboard analytics, are obvious to customers and end-users. Other advantages, like multi-tenancy, allow for cost savings on the part of vendors in the implementation, updates, and maintenance of the software that customers then see in their lower total cost of ownership.

When Choosing an ERP, HRM, CRM Solution, Know Your Technology

AcctTwo is a consulting firm that provides cloud-based technology and back-office process outsourcing. We whole-heartedly embrace "the cloud" in both the solutions we provide and the tools we use to run our own business. One of the services we offer is to implement Intacct's best-in-class financial software for our clients, mostly small to mid-sized businesses across many different industries. Intacct is a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor. With the term SaaS being bandied about lately, we felt compelled to explain what it really means and why we feel it matters.

Don't Focus on the Software's Price-Tag, Focus on the ROI

An obvious question and subsequent discussion that comes up in this business is "How much does a software solution cost?" When a customer sees the price tag associated with any software purchase, there is an immediate, visceral, human reaction. The customer or company has most likely determined a specific budget for the new tool that's being considered, and even if that assessment hasn't been made with due diligence, there's some sort of ballpark number in most people's heads, or at least a limit, when they start to look at what's available. What often quickly gets lost is the return on investment of those solutions.